Place: Sala BBK

When: 12/12/2015, 12:30

With a degree in English Literature and Music, is a benchmark of mountain literature in recent years. She has written eight books on mountaineering and mountain culture, including 'Freedom Climbers', awarded with four major prizes, like the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature and the Banff Mountain Book Festival Grand Prize. She comes to Bilbao Mendi Film Festival to present the translation to Spanish 'Escaladores de la libertad'.

Place: Hall of Sala BBK

When: December 19, 11:00

The 8th edition of the Bilbao Mendi Film Festival opens its doors to literature and mountain books, providing a meeting place for authors and readers. In Sala BBK the public may know some of the new titles of 2015 and will have time to meet and talk to the authors, and get signatures from them.

Place: PIUGAZ climbing center (Zorrozaurre, Olagorta 25, Bilbao)

When: 20/12/2015, 11:00am-3:00pm

Would you like to climb? The climbing centre PIUGAZ and Bilbao Mendi Film Festival will give everyone the opportunity to try this discipline −from 4 year-old kids to 70 year-old adults− on the 20th December (from 11: 00am to 3:00pm.) With a capacity of 200 people, the centre will open its doors and offer free special activities to children. Just sign up through our website, wear comfortable clothes... and enjoy! In addition, the first 100 children under 16 will have a T-shirt as a gift.

Full entry

Place: Sala BBK

When: 12/12/2015, 11:30

Two great professionals in their respective fields, the chef Eneko Atxa and the climber Alberto Iñurrategi, will delight us with a talk about something they both know very well: 'THE CHALLENGE'.

Both have faced many challenges. The chef Eneko Atxa to make his way into cookery, open his own restaurant Azurmendi, and get three Michelin stars. The mountaineer Aretxabaleta, Iñurrategi to be is the tenth mountaineer has managed to crown the 14 'eight-thousanders'. Even more than in the numbers Alberto draws attention to style; the example that shows his passion for alpine style is the challenge that he is carrying out with WOPeak.

Both of them will get us into an interesting conversation in which we will discover how it has been their search of the excellence.

Place: Sala BBK

When: 12/12/2015, 19:30

Adam Ondra, the current world champion, lives in Brno, Czech Republic, where he began to climb. He will talk about his beginnings in the sport, near his home, and about his favorite places to climb, as Flatanger, in Norway. It is a perfect granite cave where Adam made the first 9b+, 'Change', and where he planned projects that represent another level, although then he felt weak to carry them out. Therefore he got in touch with Patxi Usobiaga and began to train "for real" in order to try to win the World Championship, but also to make Adam evolve. How is training with Patxi? How have the last two years in competition been? Adam will talk not only about the hardness of the track, but also about how climbing provides him with happiness and freedom. Climbing changed his life for the better, and he also expects to change the life of those who come to his conference.

Place: Sala BBK

When: 19/12/2015, 19:30

2015, Spain, 30 min

Direction: Karen Solé Hughes

Production: Walk on Project Foundation (WOP)

Bilbao Mendi Film Festival will host the premiere of the film directed by Karen Sole Hughes, which tells the ascent of the mountaineers Alberto Iñurrategi, Juan Vallejo and Mikel Zabalza, and the camera Juanjo Otazu to Chamlang this fall. The expedition WOPEAK crowned the Nepalese mountain on the 19th October despite having an unfavourable weather forecast, and having to endure extreme cold temperatures and high wind, which discouraged attacking the summit.

The artist and photographer Imanol Marrodán brings us his work ‘Anboto’, a publication in book form, which is the result of an examination that lasted more than five years. performing various creative works inside the mountain and its environment. The project brings together art and nature in order to promote different views of this stunning natural space. As vehicle for travel and approach, the artist uses the impression of light to map and inventory changes in the shape of space and landscape, its different modulations, reflecting the different states of nature. He leaves the human presence as final background and focuses on a landscape “without figures". We can see the landscape again and this mountain, Anboto, from a prism that allows us to focus on its most mysterious and least known aspect.

Place: Sala BBK

When: 15/12/2015; 19:30

The profession of mountain guide, centenarian and respected in the Alpine area countries, remains largely unknown in the south of the Pyrenees. Do we really know what hiring a guide brings us? How is the relationship between a guide and his companions? How does increased competition affect on the daily work of a professional mountaineer? Do we know that a guide not only accompanies but teaches us to recognize the mountain? Anecdotes, experiences, guided experiences in all kinds of mountains, confessions and reflections from the hand of Christian Ravier, Simon Elias and Oscar Gogorza will help clarify the ins and outs of a profession that deserves to be discovered.

Place: Sala BBK

When: 13/12/2015

Mendi Talks

They are training and awareness lectures offered by international professionals with a broad curriculum and great prestige in the audiovisual sector. They are participatory workshops in which participants can contribute with their comments and questions.

'Jugando a escalar' (Playing to climb)

Dani Salas

The new documentary project of Dokumalia Producciones, ‘Jugando a escalar‘ (Playing to climb) tells the daily adventure of a group of five young climbers that have to combine their studies and everyday life with the life of a top climber. The director Dani Salas will tell us what the project is about and how it has been developed.

Andoni Esparta

Besides, the third shooting of the project took place in the Basque Country: in Dima, Duranguesado and the cave of Baltzola, with Andoni Esparta as protagonist. Andoni is a 14 year-old climber born in Bilbao, who has already become a reference in difficulty climbing. He and his father are going to join us.

Place: Sala BBK

When: 13/12/2015, 11:30

Mendi Talks

They are training and awareness lectures offered by international professionals with a broad curriculum and great prestige in the audiovisual sector. They are participatory workshops in which participants can contribute with their comments and questions.

National Geographic

Rebecca Martin(Executive Director of the Expeditions Council of National Geographic)

Rebecca Martin manages exploration scholarships and projects, and works as a mediator among the new talents, institutions, and the media in order to create new opportunities. She will present the scholarships 'The Young Explorers Grants Program' and 'Expeditions Council.' During his tenure as director, Rebecca has supervised more than 600 projects that have received $20 million in aid.

Eñaut Izagirre (National Geographic´s grant holder)

This youngster from Elgoibar, Eñaut Izaguirre, with some help from BMFF, has received a grant from National Geographic and he will talk about his experience as an example. His project 'INCOGNITA PATAGONIA' is a combination of exploration, climbing, knowledge of local glaciers, cartography and historical research. His aim is to explore and cross the ice surface of Cloue, located in the southernmost part of South America −in Hoste Island−.

Place: Sala BBK

When: 19/12/2015, 19:30

BMFF will pay a warm tribute by awarding the 2015 WOP Prize to Josep Manuel Anglada, who has been at the forefront of mountaineering since the 50s. He is also author of many legendary openings in Ordesa, Montserrat, and Pedraforca, and he climbed dozens of virgin peaks in the Andes, Greenland, Hindu-kush... In addition, he was also the first European in a difficult route in Yosemite. At 82 he keeps climbing with his wife Elisabeth Vergés, also a pioneer of women's mountaineering. Both protagonists of the mountaineering history of the 20th century will join us.

Photographer: Mikel Alonso

Place: Sala Rekalde

When: 03/12/2015 – 10/01/2016

The 30 photos that form the exhibition, some of them in large format, narrate the life of the 30,000 people who live in Hushe Valley. The villages, scattered along the river Hushe, are crossing sites to access several of the ‘eight-thousanders’ of the planet. The exhibition includes portraits of women and girls primarily at home, in the street or at school, made by the photographer Mikel Alonso. He accompanies volunteers of Baltistan Foundation, which has been promoting the gender equality there for years.

Place: Metro Bilbao

Stations: Santutxu, Indautxu, Deusto and Portugalete

- When: 9/11/2015 - 30/11/2015

Stations: Casco Viejo, Abando and Moyua

- When: 1/12/2015 - 31/12/2015

This year, the winners of the international competition CVCEPHOTO, a photo contest organized by the Basque Club of Camping Elkartea –a mountaineering club of San Sebastian−, will cover the stations of Metro Bilbao. The 19 spectacular images captured by renowned photographers such as Petr Piechowicz, Fredrik Schenholm and Paul Bride show the mountain, the nature and the activities that take place there in an impressive way.